Brussels will sketch out its 2030 green targets next week, and there’s a strong possibility that its renewable energy goals will be more suggestion than mandate. In March, the European Commission will vote on a plan for 2030, and the mood is decidedly less optimistic than it was when targets for 2020 were put in place, thanks to rising electricity costs.

Spain recently walked back on solar energy subsidies, and in so doing hurt its credibility and left many green energy producers out in the lurch. The country’s energy policies are a mess right now, but the decision to renegotiate rates paid for renewable energy production, though unpopular, was necessary. The takeaway for the rest of the world: propping up technologies incapable of competing on their own merit doesn’t work.